How Many Calories to Gain Muscle?

The calories you need to gain muscle will depend on a lot of factors such as activity levels, body type (ectomorph, endomorph, mesomorph), genetics, age, sex etc.

The simplest method is to figure out your maintenance weight (the amount of food you can eat without gaining or losing weight), then add 250-500 calories to your daily intake for a week in order to gain muscle.

For example

Maintenance weight = 2500 calories. To gain muscle I would recommend a caloric intake between 2750 calories and 3000 calories.

Measure your weight at the start and then after one week on this increased caloric update, as a rough guide it is realistic to achieve 1/2 to 1lb of muscle gain per week without much fat gain. If however, at the end of this week you still havent gained muscle then add another 250-500 calories a day the following week until you start to gain muscle mass.

My maintenance weight is roughly 3000 calories – the RDA for the “average population” is 2500 for men and 2000 for women. In my opinion the average man is lazy, doesn’t exercise and is overweight – disagree? Look around next time you go food shopping and you’ll see what I mean. Because I train frequently and I am an ectomorph with a high metabolism, I have to eat a lot of food to bulk up – just see my last article.

EXAMPLE

So if I maintain at 3000 I will eat 3250-3500 calories for one week and measure my weight.

If I haven’t gained muscle, then I have to add another 250-500 calories to my diet – which now means i have to eat between 3750-4000 calories a day, that’s double of what the RDA for women is. So it’s seriously a lot of food! And if you STILL don’t gain, then keep on and on adding the calories in small steps week after week until you do gain muscle. Most people who don’t gain muscle or say the can never gain weight aren’t eating enough. I myself was one of those people – a “hardgainer”. I definitely didnt realise how much I had to eat in order to gain muscle, I went on a “see-food” diet and got a bit tubby, but didn’t gain much muscle, now I know better and have gotten significant results despite my genetics and metabolism.

Next week I’ll be showing you a formula on how to calculate your metabolic needs and how many calories you are likely to need to gain weight. Until then why don’t you pop down and drop a comment on how much muscle you can gain in a week, how much is muscle and how much is fat. It’ll be interesting to see how much others can gain, see you in the comments section!

——————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Kirthi (Kirt) Nandakumar is a Personal Trainer based in Huddersfield. Kirt is based in the Misguided Muscle Personal Training studio in the Town Centre of Huddersfield. Kirt guarantees results with all his services, whether it’s personal training, buddy training or online coaching.

To enquire about personal training click HERE.

To enquire about online coaching click HERE.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————–